Pike County Ballads and Other Poems

MY CASTLE IN SPAIN.

  There was never a castle seen
    So fair as mine in Spain:
  It stands embowered in green,
    Crowning the gentle slope
  Of a hill by the Xenil's shore
  And at eve its shade flaunts o'er
    The storied Vega plain,
  And its towers are hid in the mists of Hope;
    And I toil through years of pain
    Its glimmering gates to gain.

  In visions wild and sweet
  Sometimes its courts I greet:
    Sometimes in joy its shining halls
  I tread with favoured feet;
  But never my eyes in the light of day
    Were blest with its ivied walls,
  Where the marble white and the granite gray
  Turn gold alike when the sunbeams play,
    When the soft day dimly falls.

  I know in its dusky rooms
    Are treasures rich and rare;
  The spoil of Eastern looms,
    And whatever of bright and fair
  Painters divine have caught and won
    From the vault of Italy's air:
  White gods in Phidian stone
    People the haunted glooms;
  And the song of immortal singers
  Like a fragrant memory lingers,
    I know, in the echoing rooms.

  But nothing of these, my soul!
    Nor castle, nor treasures, nor skies,
  Nor the waves of the river that roil
    With a cadence faint and sweet
    In peace by its marble feet—
  Nothing of these is the goal
    For which my whole heart sighs.
  'Tis the pearl gives worth to the shell—
    The pearl I would die to gain;
  For there does my lady dwell,
  My love that I love so well—
    The Queen whose gracious reign
    Makes glad my castle in Spain.

  Her face so pure and fair
    Sheds light in the shady places,
  And the spell of her girlish graces
    Holds charmed the happy air.
  A breath of purity
    For ever before her flies,
  And ill things cease to be
    In the glance of her honest eyes.
  Around her pathway flutter,
    Where her dear feet wander free
    In youth's pure majesty,
    The wings of the vague desires;
  But the thought that love would utter
    In reverence expires.

  Not yet! not yet shall I see
    That face which shines like a star
    O'er my storm-swept life afar,
  Transfigured with love for me.
  Toiling, forgetting, and learning
  With labour and vigils and prayers,
    Pure heart and resolute will,
    At last I shall climb the hill
  And breathe the enchanted airs
  Where the light of my life is burning
    Most lovely and fair and free,
  Where alone in her youth and beauty
  And bound by her fate's sweet duty,
    Unconscious she waits for me.